


Songs About Rain

by Cuda (Scylla)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Anticipation, Car Sex, Don't copy to another site, First Time, Hand Jobs, Inspired by Music, Kissing, M/M, Making Out, Music, Rain, Title from a Country Song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 01:54:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19984123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scylla/pseuds/Cuda
Summary: After a hunt that went sideways Castiel and Sam skirt around the truth of things, until the radio intervenes.





	Songs About Rain

**Author's Note:**

> This story was an episode to let my ancient country roots flag fly. Here's the full list of the songs that Castiel's Dodge played, if you'd like to listen along. Radio fuzz not included.
> 
>   1. Smoky Mountain Rain, by Ronnie Milsap
>   2. Like the Rain, by Clint Black
>   3. Rainy Night in Georgia, by Sam Moore & Conway Twitty
>   4. Kentucky Rain, by Elvis Presley
>   5. Songs About Rain, by Gary Allan
>   6. Mandolin Rain, by Bruce Hornsby
>   7. I'm No Stranger to the Rain, by Keith Whitley
>   8. Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain, by Willie Nelson
>   9. I Sure Can Smell the Rain, by Blackhawk
>   10. A Better Rain, by George Strait
>   11. Georgia Rain, by Trisha Yearwood
>   12. Every Storm (Runs Out of Rain), by Gary Allan
>   13. I'd Do Anything for Love, by Meat Loaf
>   14. Something Sexy About the Rain, by Kenny Chesney
>   15. Let It Rain, by Zac Brown Band
>   16. I Love a Rainy Night, by Eddie Rabbitt
> 


A sharp whistle jerked Sam upright. His foot collided with the central leg of the table at their booth. Three coffee mugs jittered on the surface of it; one full enough to slop over the sides.

He looked straight into Dean's flat, unimpressed stare. He swerved it in a second, like he'd accidentally glanced into the sun.  
  
"Earth to Sam," Dean said, brows up, "you all right?"

Sam swallowed a sharp reply, as he heard the taut lines of concern in Dean's voice. They were all tense. "I'm fine," he said, and squinted as he rummaged for the thread of discussion he'd dropped. "Where's this case?"

Dean's fingers worried a straw wrapper into origami shapes. "Arizona," he said, tossed a paper accordion caterpillar across the table and fished his keys out of his pocket, "looks pretty straightforward, and the drive'll give you three or four days to rest up."  
  
Sam picked up the folded wrapper, watching it stretch and compress between his fingers. His fingertips brushed one another, and the ticklish sensation shot a thrill up his arms.  
  
Focus. "Really, I'm okay," he said. Good try. Not a hundred percent accurate, given how he needed a whole breath before he could start the next sentence. "Cas patched me up."  
  
"This is the third time you've tuned me out. Maybe Cas missed your noggin."  
  
The words conjured the warm weight of Castiel's hand on Sam's forehead. A rush of separate heat sprawled in his chest, and his teeth snapped closed on the last of his patience. Sam rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. "I'm bored, not brain-damaged," he said, "you wanna go to Arizona? Let's go to Arizona."  
  
With relief and a pang of guilt, Sam watched his brother's concern shut off like a lightswitch. Dean slid to the end of the booth and stood. "Fine. Then we both get a long weekend. I'm ready to blow this town."  
  
Before Sam could join him, the diner door jingled and Castiel stepped inside. His eyes went to Sam.  
  
"You're leaving," Castiel said, sounding disappointed.  
  
And suddenly Sam was disappointed, too. Suddenly he wanted to stay in the shitty diner, more than he'd ever wanted to stay in a shitty diner in his life.  
  
Come on, you fucking teenager, he snarled at himself. One disappointed angel was not a crisis. He could give Castiel a friendship bracelet and ask if he wanted to go out later.  
  
"Uh, yeah," Dean said, ducking his head, "look Cas, you head back to the Bunker and charge your batteries. Me and Sam need a few more days to stretch our legs."  
  
Castiel's gaze flicked from Sam to Dean and back. A question lingered in his expression; one Sam couldn't decode. "I don't need to charge anything, Dean. I'm coming with you."  
  
Dean tossed a tenner on the table and began herding them all to the door. Sam led the way, eager to get out of the diner and the town before his clearly punch-drunk brain cooked up another reason to sit here. He could feel Castiel behind him, warm as the sun on his back, and closed his eyes as a shiver shot down his spine.  
  
"Figured the cleanup would wipe you out," Dean said, a shrug in his voice.  
  
"I'm fine," Castiel replied.  
  
The door jingled again, releasing them all into the dark, rain-streaked parking lot.  
  
"Awesome," Dean growled, "everyone's fine."  
  
The Impala and Castiel's silver pickup waited for them at the very end of the lot. Sam reached for the Impala's passenger door, then glanced over his shoulder to the moon-pale truck and Castiel, just swinging up into the cab.  
  
He turned back, glancing across the Impala's roof and straight into the crosshairs of Dean's open curiosity.  
  
This whole thing was dumb. He had more control over himself than this. Squaring up his jaw, Sam dropped into the passenger seat and slammed the door. Dean climbed in beside him a few seconds later, and sat, fists light on the bottom of the wheel.  
  
Castiel's pickup coughed to life. Sam looked out the window to the wall of silver beside him, up to where Castiel's hands rested on his steering wheel, a mirror to Dean's.  
  
"You got any idea what's going on with Cas?" Dean asked, blunt.  
  
"What?" Sam laughed, half panic, "Nothing's going on. Far as I know, anyway."  
  
"Come to think of it, you're both being weird. Something happen back there, last night?" Dean looked sideways at Sam, expression lost in the dark of the cab. Castiel's truck still hadn't moved.  
  
Sam tried not to think about last night, about how it felt to have his throat ripped out.  
  
About how he'd come back to life with his head in those hands he could just barely see on Castiel's steering wheel.  
  
About—  
  
Sam tried a little harder.  
  
"Yeah," he admitted, assuming one secret was good as another, "I uh, got hurt pretty bad, before you got there. There were a few more than we guessed. Vamp got me from behind, and—yeah." He rubbed his throat, both to avoid speaking the injury aloud, and to touch the miraculously unbroken flesh. "Cas brought me back."  
  
The cab went still. Dean's fists left the wheel. He scrubbed his face, quick and hard, like he could scuff away the feeling that the whole universe was a wreck. It wasn't the first time they'd said something like this to one another; wouldn't be the last. Sam had never gotten used to the feeling of coming back to consciousness from a mortal wound, or of sitting in the car with his brother after they'd been dead. How reality felt a little more wrong every time he opened his eyes when he knew in his bones that he shouldn't. He didn't know how much work it took to drag him back this time. He didn't know how long he'd been down. How 'mostly' he'd been dead.  
  
The not knowing. The blank spaces. He wanted to know, and couldn't ask.  
  
"How is he even vertical after that?" Dean asked, "The last thing he should be doing is tailing us on another hunt."  
  
Sam rolled a shoulder. "I don't know. Maybe he doesn't want to go home yet, either."  
  
They sat a few minutes longer. Castiel waited beside Sam without looking down at him, hands in the exact spot they'd been since he last looked. They squeezed the ridged vinyl, knuckles rising and falling. The truck idled a low note that vibrated through Sam's bones.  
  
"Well, somebody needs to keep an eye on him," Dean said at last, "he's got things waiting to run him down, same as us. Last time we left him like this, it got ugly in a hot minute."  
  
Like somebody poured a spotlight out on Castiel's passenger seat, it filled up Sam's thoughts. A shitty pickup truck couldn't be any more golden and enticing. "I'll ride with him tonight," he said, reaching for the door.  
  
Dean laughed. "That was quick. All right, good, because I'm not letting you drive my car."  
  
-  
  
Dean watched Sam climb out of his car, sliding out of sight around the bed of Castiel's pickup.  
  
Leaning low across the seat, Dean saw the sudden animation in Castiel's hands. The crease of a smile, just visible from here.  
  
Shaking his head with a snort, Dean turned over the ignition. He straightened, curled his arm over the back of his empty passenger seat, and smiled as he backed out of the parking space.  
  
Morons.  
  
Dean might have been late to the scene last night, but he wasn't that late. He'd seen a few things, and if he had a bookie riding shotgun, he'd slap down a bet.  
  
"Hundred bucks says I lose those headlights before morning," Dean said to the imaginary bookie. Who had on the green plastic visor and the pinstripe shirt with the sleeve garters because what the hell, it was his imagination.  
  
The silver pickup's headlights centered in Dean's rearview mirror as they followed him out onto the road. Sam and Castiel were headed somewhere tonight, but it sure wasn't Arizona. At least not without a little layover somewhere quieter than the highway. And since it couldn't make things in the Bunker any more strained than they already were, but stood half a chance of making lots of things a little bit less miserable, it was about Goddamned time.  
  
So long as they didn't do something stupid, like pretend they were fine, or get jumped.  
  
He reached over to plug his phone into the lighter, just in case.  
  
-  
  
This must be the lonely hearts radio hour. For the past fifteen minutes, Castiel's cab was full of every sad, pining country song in the books. Sam checked for a CD, even flipped the station a few times, to no avail.  
  
"It does that," Castiel explained after the third attempt to change the station, "I don't know why."  
  
"What, play nothing but Ronnie Milsap?" Sam laughed, as the aforementioned singer wailed about Smoky Mountain rain. Castiel didn't elaborate. Lightning strobed across the dashboard, lighting up the clouds on the horizon.  
  
"We're driving into another storm," Castiel said, and choked up on the wheel like a baseball player.  
  
"You change the wipers?" Sam asked.  
  
"Of course. I take care of my vehicle," Castiel replied, affront and pride about equally mixed.  
  
Sam smiled out the passenger side, where Castiel - hopefully - couldn't see. "Prairie storms may blow through fast, but they dump buckets."  
  
The radio shifted to another country song about rain, now as a metaphor for desperate love. Sam's attention shifted back to the dashboard.  
  
"Like I said, it does that," Castiel said with a shrug, "maybe it's some sort of resonance with my frequencies. I've taken it apart, but it doesn't seem any different than any other radio."  
  
Sam tipped his head, curiosity overriding the cocktail of nerves and arousal that had been skating through his blood ever since he'd launched himself up in the truck. "So by 'it,' you mean the radio plays music you like?"  
  
"'Like' is a strong word," Castiel shot back, with enough vehemence to startle Sam into chuckles, "it insists on country. I think it's simply more resonant."  
  
So, nothing out of the ordinary. Castiel's truck serenaded him with broken hearted country music on the regular. Totally normal. "You tested this for EMF?" Sam asked, "Maybe you stole a ghost."  
  
After a derisive snort, Castiel laid an almost affectionate hand on the dash. "Of course. It's neither haunted nor possessed, nor is there any trace of witchcraft. On a whim I even checked to see if it was a cursed person."  
  
"It's just an ordinary truck," Sam said slowly, "that happens to like you a lot."  
  
"It's just an ordinary truck," Castiel echoed, impatience creeping into his voice, "with an ordinary radio, that occasionally does this."  
  
"Which is - echoing your mood?"  
  
Castiel put both hands on the wheel again, kneading the vinyl. Sam watched his hands move in the dim green light of the speedometer. "I have no idea. I don't pay much attention to my mood."  
  
Sam bent towards the dash, running his fingers under the glove compartment and the seat; poking them in the air vents, "Dude, how have we not known this?"  
  
"There's never been an opportunity. Have you ever known Dean to voluntarily listen to the radio?"  
  
"…Fair."  
  
Rain pattered through the end of the song, mirroring the sound of bugs swatting the windshield. Castiel kicked on the wipers, adding their slow rhythm to the radio for a beat or two. Lightning glowed in strident flashes, from one end of the world to the other.  
  
A slinky, melancholy song about rainy nights in Georgia swelled up through the silence, with a Seventies kind of warmth and harmony that made Sam cringe and imagine warm hands sliding down his shoulders at the same time.  
  
"Does it bug you?" Sam asked, crossing his arms, "not knowing why it does… whatever this is?"  
  
"Since the Fall, I've had to get used to not knowing things," Castiel replied. There was more to that statement. Sam waited for it, and wasn't disappointed.  
  
"It's frustrating," Castiel went on, "and I miss feeling certain. But I'm curious now. I was never curious."  
  
Ahead of them, Dean signaled for an exit to the Interstate. Castiel followed him up the ramp, and together they merged into the sparse late night traffic outside Toledo.  
  
"You like being curious?"  
  
Sam watched Castiel's profile, picked out in the dim green light. Watched Castiel's expression tighten and relax as he weighed the details for the truth. Eventually, he nodded. "I do, Sam."  
  
Elvis filled the space left behind by the song before him, bringing his broad voice and tambourine to another song about rain. In this one, the rain in his shoes was a metaphor for loss and misery. Sam knew it, song and feeling alike. He leaned forward to flip the radio, laughing as the station settled again. One more song about loneliness. One more song about love and regret.  
  
"Is that—" Castiel sounded bemused, "—is that a song about… songs about rain?"  
  
The lightning ahead of them intensified, now with thunder on its heels. Heavy strikes strobed across the truck's interior and shot static through the music, while rain - actual, rather than metaphorical - replaced the thud of bugs on the windshield.  
  
There were more. Country songs about rain that Sam had never heard. Deep cuts from artists he barely knew, and singers he didn't know existed. He didn't know there were so many metaphors for longing to make out of wet weather, yet Castiel's pickup seemed determined to set them up and knock them down like their own personal four-wheeled-drive disc jockey.  
  
Sam unbuckled his seat belt. The click collected Castiel's attention, who looked over at him in the dark.  
  
"Sam?"  
  
"Experiment," Sam said, grinning through - and maybe because of - uncertainty and arousal. If Castiel could keep on living in this wrecked, wrong universe, willfully taking risks and being curious, maybe he wouldn't mind company. He slid across the pickup's bench seat, into Castiel's space.  
  
"Please put your seat belt on," Castiel worried, "at this speed, the force of a collision would project you through the windshield like a comet."  
  
"It's all right, I've got it," Sam replied, digging out the center belt from beneath the backrest.  
  
When he ran his fingers down Castiel's sleeve, the radio went to static.  
  
"So, um, I want to talk about what happened last night," Sam said. He felt Castiel stiffen up under his touch and almost chickened out. Then again, the radio was still static - Sam never considered white noise a come-on before, but the difference felt encouraging. He pressed on. "You kissed me. After you brought me back."  
  
"I healed you," Castiel corrected, voice tight with anxiety, "if you'd been dead, I don't think I could have pulled you back."  
  
The radio shifted, became a garble of voices, and settled again. On a song that was neither country nor rain-inspired.  
  
Meat Loaf's tremulous voice sailed with a declaration of devotion.  
  
Sam thought, yahtzee, and felt a little guilty about it."Okay," he said, crossing his arms to keep his hands to himself, "but you kissed me."  
  
"Fear," Castiel replied, "relief. I wasn't sure I'd gotten to you in time. When I touched your face, and you were already cooling,I'm sorry, I—"  
  
There the apology stopped. Because Castiel might not have the certainty of Heaven's Garrison anymore, but he was no fool. Through the intermittent dark, Sam watched him taking stock. Of the situation. Of how Sam's thigh wasn't even an inch from his.  
  
"Don't be. I'm not. Sorry, I mean," Sam said.  
  
"I don't understand."  
  
With a deep breath, suitable for the kinds of things that required a plunge into dark waters, Sam screwed his patience to the sticking place and made one more push. He couldn't help it. Maybe hope was stupid, maybe Castiel was just confused and literal, but that way of thinking was growing a little thin these days. Sam was willing to stake the hundred he didn't have that whatever Castiel didn't understand, it wasn't the reason why a person kissed another person senseless after hauling them back from the brink of death.  
  
If that was the case, they'd have had this conversation years ago.  
  
"I mean," Sam said, leaning close enough to Castiel's ear for his breath to stir his hair, "I'd like to do it again."  
  
He collided with Castiel's side as he crossed two lanes of traffic at an abrupt diagonal. He braked on the shoulder, threw the truck in park and sat there a minute, hands tight on the wheel, staring hard at the dash. Without the road noise, the rain was deafening, marked only by the fizzing, spitting radio. It was way too loud; too much noise to tell Castiel how he'd had the same thoughts whenever reality moved itself to reunite them, when Castiel walked back out of the shadows with the memory of his dead face still fresh in Sam's mind. When minutes and hours and days ago Castiel was dog food, or dust, or sported a hole in his chest or sludgy black ink in his mouth.  
  
When he was miraculously whole again, and Sam wanted to tell him how much he'd been loved. How much he was loved. And welcomed. And needed. And wanted.  
  
But how could he tell Castiel any of that? It was borderline obsessive. A human obsessed with an angel wasn't exactly a surprise - especially not a human so hell-bent on redemption. Angels were designed for Biblical-levels of adoration.  
  
Weren't they?  
  
"This is a bad idea," Castiel said, over the rain.  
  
"Yeah, maybe," Sam admitted, struggling to find his voice as the bottom dropped out of his stomach. A semi swept past, wind drag rocking the pickup. Castiel's intent study on the dash ended, and his face turned to Sam. The dashboard lights painted his tired eyes green; let Sam see the furrowed brow and the tight, fuck-this turn of his mouth.  
  
Sam leaned back and closed his eyes. Too late not to imagine the kiss, vivid enough to feel. He wanted to crawl out of his own skin. To leave all the things behind that remembered Castiel's lips, and Castiel's hands.  
  
He reached for the button on his seat belt, only to bump fingers on a similar mission. Castiel set them both free, following as Sam moved back to the passenger seat.  
  
"Sam?" Castiel asked, pausing in the middle, where Sam had just been.  
  
Sam looked at him sideways, shoving his hair out of the way as it screened him in. "This is a bad idea, right?" he echoed, with half an apologetic smile.  
  
Castiel didn't return the gesture. Didn't smile. Didn't shrug. Didn't reassure him, because of course it was a bad idea, and they both knew it. He put a hand on Sam's shoulder, fingers curling on the fabric. Tugging just a little, in case Sam's good sense and logical brain didn't get the memo to take a hike.  
  
It rained harder. Sam assumed it wasn't hailing because the windshield hadn't cracked. The noise drowned out the radio's hiss, and swallowed whatever words they had left.  
  
Sam let Castiel's hand draw him over, into a kiss that was nothing like he'd remembered. A plush gentleness and Castiel's breath, shivering into his mouth like a whispered hello. In stark contrast, Castiel had a fistful of shirt in a death grip, still pulling even while Sam kissed him back. Like he wanted to be sure that Sam knew he was right there; maybe this was a bad idea, but it was mutual.  
  
Castiel tasted like water; smelled like soap and summer humidity. His palm came to rest on Sam's chest, heavy and warm above his adrenaline-soaked heartbeat. His stomach clenched; the world tightened down to match the close quarters of the cab.  
  
Castiel was so warm, the solid weight and power and heat of him pressing in on Sam until finally, finally, Sam's actual dick woke up to the reality of the situation the rest of him had been in for the past fifteen minutes. The little tendrils of heat and arousal grew, into the familiar pressure in search of release.  
  
"I want you," Castiel said, more air than words. He withdrew a little, dragging his eyes up to Sam's with an obvious effort. Passing cars painted him in intermittent stripes of light; white, red, then blue-black shadow again. He was a man who wanted to be kissed again, badly, and he met Sam halfway into the next one.  
  
Sam thought half a dozen answers as the silence stretched thin. Thought about pulling Castiel down tight, crashing their mouths together like the downpour on the roof. But this conversation of hands and kisses and confessions was new, and good. Really good. He wanted to keep it going; let himself be hungry for it.  
  
"Yeah," Sam whispered, "I want you too, Cas."  
  
He reached up and unknotted the blue tie one-handed; tugged it from Castiel's neck with the soft zip of satin on cotton. Castiel lifted his chin for Sam's hands, suddenly fumbling and huge in his nerves.  
  
He wasn't sure what he expected. Powerful beings, in his experience, rolled through like a river. Oh, the river was there; Sam could feel the shattering, explosive strength behind every careful touch. The danger fed his arousal - danger had always been hot - but tonight it wasn't even the tip of the iceberg.  
  
Castiel's deliberate gentleness was hotter. The controlled way he moved; easing with a singleminded focus towards what he wanted - and what he wanted was now so clearly Sam that it washed any lingering concern from Sam's thoughts. It made him feel the edges of something he hadn't felt in ages. Something so profound, so bone-deep that he had to fight not to fight it.  
  
Safe.  
  
Castiel's touch made him feel safe.  
  
That safety, at the risk of a few more truck-related metaphors, threw Sam's transmission wide open.  
  
The cab couldn't really hold them like this, stacked one on top of the other, but Sam was determined to try as he squeezed around Castiel and climbed into his lap. Things got way too crowded in about four square feet of space and for a hot second Sam thought his kneecap might dislocate, but then he was sinking down, splay-legged over Castiel's thighs, and the pickup fit again. Perfect. More or less.  
  
If he said he remembered the sex after that, he'd be lying.  
  
Sam remembered the pressure, the heat and the taste of Castiel's mouth, and the way his back hurt more and more from hunching in the tight space. He wasn't sure when Castiel got his pants open, or when he got a hand around Sam; but in a hot minute the pleasure spiked and Sam felt the sweet euphoria of release.  
  
He knew he got off. He felt it in the pleasant lassitude of his muscles that lasted almost all the way to Indiana. He just got the details a little fuzzy.  
  
But he remembered the hotel room in Saint Louis. And the one in Oklahoma City, where they spent two days with the taste of greasy fried food in their mouths and the stench of old cigarette smoke in each other's clothes as they nearly broke the ancient motel bed.  
  
The pickup remembered, too, and serenaded them most of the way to New Mexico with all the songs about rain that love and passionate sex could inspire.

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to DV Skitz, who gave me the suggestion this afternoon that _finally_ got this fic finished.


End file.
